Nature Boy? So now I'm Nature Boy? I request that I be the one who posts the pictures of the crabs and other animals and now this! If that's the case then...well, let's not even go there.
Yesterday's hike down to Forbidden Island rocked my universe. There ended up being six of us who hiked down. Here we are in full color:
We're standing on a lookout that is about half way down the trail. From left to right we have Emily, Angelo, Dee, Scott, and Joe. Dee works for CRM and her husband Scott just moved out here last Friday. Scott's looking for a job, so if you're hiring...well, give him a call or something. Joe is working with the AGO for the summer and he just got here Tuesday. Here are some photos from the tide pools immediately around Forbidden Island and from the top of the island:
This octopus crawled out of the waves and wiggled its way up on to the rocks.
As soon as he crawled out of the sun onto some shaded rocks he changed colors. How frickin' cool is that! You can see that he was kind of small. He's got a few years until a local fisherman turns him into octopus kelaguen.
There were a bunch of these tasty morsels stuck to various rocks in the tidepools. The shell looks very similar to the shell that the crab with the blue legs in the second photo is living in, but there is no crab living inside this shell. The animal that lives inside this shell is called aliling locally or trochus in English. It is a kind of sea snail. Trochus are very tasty, but unfortunately they are endangered. There is currently a CNMI-wide ban on harvesting them...but I've still seen people eating it at parties and bbqs...I guess no one told them that you're not supposed to eat endangered species.
This is the cliff that we hiked up to get to the top of Forbidden Island. That is Hoover in the distance. You can use him to judge for yourself how high and steep the hike up there can be.
The top of the island is mostly grass with absolutely no trees. Brown and Black Noddies use the cliff and the grass for nests. There were eggs everywhere. It was like the Easter Bunny got lost and left his eggs all over Forbidden Island.
I know that pictures of eggs aren't very exciting, but you know what happens to those eggs, right? They hatch baby noddies! We probably saw about 20 hatchlings running around the island.
One of the baby noddies tried to hide from us by sticking his head in a hole:
He wasn't too successful. There was another hole on the other side of the rock:
Peek-a-boo!
The view from the top of the island was great, too.
From the top of the island, looking down into the water, we could see hundreds of fish:
More on the fish later. Scott brought an underwater camera. If I can get him to give me a few of his pictures, I'll put them in a later post.
This is the view from the Eastern end of the island. Beyond this point there is just thousands of miles of open ocean.
The final critter in this post is going to be a Pacific Reef Heron:
This guy was fishing in the shallow tide pools while we were snacking on Cheez-Its and drinking beer. We had an argument over what type of bird he was. I looked him up when I got home. Turns out we were all wrong.
This octopus crawled out of the waves and wiggled its way up on to the rocks.
As soon as he crawled out of the sun onto some shaded rocks he changed colors. How frickin' cool is that! You can see that he was kind of small. He's got a few years until a local fisherman turns him into octopus kelaguen.
There were a bunch of these tasty morsels stuck to various rocks in the tidepools. The shell looks very similar to the shell that the crab with the blue legs in the second photo is living in, but there is no crab living inside this shell. The animal that lives inside this shell is called aliling locally or trochus in English. It is a kind of sea snail. Trochus are very tasty, but unfortunately they are endangered. There is currently a CNMI-wide ban on harvesting them...but I've still seen people eating it at parties and bbqs...I guess no one told them that you're not supposed to eat endangered species.
This is the cliff that we hiked up to get to the top of Forbidden Island. That is Hoover in the distance. You can use him to judge for yourself how high and steep the hike up there can be.The top of the island is mostly grass with absolutely no trees. Brown and Black Noddies use the cliff and the grass for nests. There were eggs everywhere. It was like the Easter Bunny got lost and left his eggs all over Forbidden Island.
I know that pictures of eggs aren't very exciting, but you know what happens to those eggs, right? They hatch baby noddies! We probably saw about 20 hatchlings running around the island. 
One of the baby noddies tried to hide from us by sticking his head in a hole:
He wasn't too successful. There was another hole on the other side of the rock:
Peek-a-boo!The view from the top of the island was great, too.
From the top of the island, looking down into the water, we could see hundreds of fish:
More on the fish later. Scott brought an underwater camera. If I can get him to give me a few of his pictures, I'll put them in a later post.
This is the view from the Eastern end of the island. Beyond this point there is just thousands of miles of open ocean.The final critter in this post is going to be a Pacific Reef Heron:
This guy was fishing in the shallow tide pools while we were snacking on Cheez-Its and drinking beer. We had an argument over what type of bird he was. I looked him up when I got home. Turns out we were all wrong.